However, the ethics of memoir when it concerns other people — writing about one’s friends and families — is a thorny issue.
Polish Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz put it well. "When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished." How does one write about one’s life — perhaps a painful episode involving friends and family members who might not want to feature in the story? How does one prevent such friends and family members from feeling like their own memories have been invaded, and their own personal stories hijacked or misrepresented?
There are countless stories of memoirs or autobiographical novels souring authors’ close relationships. In an article for The Guardian, Suellen Grealy discusses her response to her sister Lucy’s memoir, Autobiography of a Face, published in 1994.
Lucy Grealy was an award-winning Irish-American poet and memoirist who candidly wrote about issues of identity, her difficult childhood, and early adolescent experience with cancer of the jaw.
"When she [Lucy] wrote about my mother," Suellen writes, "I felt I was standing outside the door, listening to conversations I had already heard." But, as Suellen notes: "There was also irritation, for much of the book was careless. It was the first time I had experienced reading about my family and parts of my own life, and I realised how easy it was for Lucy simply to select her vantage point. I learned, too, how easily readers would accept it as the only true vantage point. "
So how does one approach the issue of writing about one’s friends and family members? First of all, a prospective author might decide to inform all related parties of their involvement in one’s writing. Perhaps I could send my writing to each of these people before publishing it, explicitly seeking approval, and expecting some conversation and compromise. Or, I could take the opposite tack, and publish my writing, raw and honest as it is, without looking back.
I could always resort to autofiction — that is, the fictionalisation of certain parts of my own story. But all writing is already a blend of fact and fiction, of memory and creation, of stringing together true remembrances and filling in the blanks. Autofiction does enable one the defence of plausible deniability, but it does not prevent readers from wildly speculating, or loved ones from feeling hurt.
In all these musings, I am most certainly overestimating my family’s inclination to seek out and read my writing. After having been burnt a few times by the frank manner by which I write about evangelical fundamentalism, my parents have simply decided to avoid my articles. But they still evince a certain wariness towards my writerly pursuits. "Don’t put this in your articles!" my mother warns, before telling me some neighbourhood gossip.
I might hope that anyone figuring in my writing — whether directly, in recollections of our shared childhoods, or in the small eccentricities of fictional characters — might be flattered by their inclusion. Or perhaps they might see my work as purely a piece of art, something to criticise and view with a certain sense of detachment. Hope springs eternal, and all that jazz.
Another option, of course, is to publish anonymously or under a pseudonym. Besides the fun in picking out a pseudonym (ideally, I’d prefer an anagram, but ‘‘Bleach Ninja’’ is neither sombre enough for a pen name, nor a real disguise), this option doesn’t really appeal to me. I must admit to my own measure of pride. If I ever write something worth publishing, I want my own name to be on it.
Finally, I might wait until the people I write about have passed on — until they are silent, buried six feet under and cannot remonstrate with me, or disagree with my interpretation of past events. But this strikes me as somewhat dishonest, like waiting for someone’s back to be turned before striking them.
I have had one brother accuse me of lacking any sense of loyalty to my family after I wrote about the horrifically bigoted homeschooling programme my parents imposed upon me as a child (Accelerated Christian Education). But hearing such feedback is infinitely preferable to the silence from my brother John, who, having died some seven years ago, can never offer his thoughts on my writings about our childhood and his struggle with depression.
As I write this, I am suspended some 35,000ft in the air above Moscow, on a flight from Auckland to London. I am returning to Oxford to finish my degree, start a new job, and figure out what I actually want to do with my life. I hope that 2022 is the year I finally finish the collection of long-form, creative non-fiction essays I have been working on for a very long time.
Some of these essays, of course, are deeply personal and autobiographical, wrestling with issues I have never disclosed to a living soul — only the cool comfort of pen and paper. I still have not decided whether I will submit this collection for publication, or if so, when, and under what circumstances. Only time will tell — I need to finish writing first. But I know that I will continue to write what I know, to draw upon the richness of my life and myriad interactions with my loved ones, because doing so helps me make sense of the world. And perhaps people will write about me, too.
- Jean Balchin, a former English student at the University of Otago, is studying at Oxford University after being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.
